This thread is not intended to address the merits of stone xp itself or the planned changes to it, but to talk about the language being used in the discussion.
Please stop referring to stone xp as an exploit. It isn’t, at least not in the sense that exploit is commonly used in video games. This applies to players, but especially to the devs. They are using the term exploit to try to soften the blow of what is a pretty straight forward balance change.
All the mechanics involved in gaining stone xp are 100% intended and will remain in the game:
you can give other characters, including alts, access to your inventory
crafting gives xp
crafting continues while offline
xp food does not tick down while offline
crafting xp is granted after crafting is finished, when within a certain range of the machine used for the craft
None of these mechanics are used in unexpected ways to gain lots of xp from stone, except maybe the last one in the most extreme cases, but that mechanic isn’t what is being changed. The only thing that isn’t 100% intended about stone xp is pure scale, and if you can’t anticipate that players in a game like this are going to take every mechanic in the game and use it at 1000x what seems reasonable, then you’ve had your head in a hole for the last 20 years of online gaming. This is purely a matter of the devs looking at the numbers, seeing that they are too high, and adjusting them. That is a balance change, not closing an exploit.
Why does it matter? ‘Exploit’ is an incredibly loaded term, and implies wrong doing on the part of players. It allows the devs to shift blame away from themselves and onto players. It also allows this change to seem more necessary. Balance is always up for debate, but an exploit must be closed. It is very reminiscent of when they changed the recipes of forging ingredients and called it a ‘bug fix.’ I love the devs of this game. They have been very responsive and even gone out of their way to help me personally with things that were much smaller that what they probably should have bothered themselves with, but I think calling gaining large amounts of xp from crafting rock into stone an exploit is disingenuous and I wish they would stop.
Personally, I don’t think a balance change and a fix to an exploit are two mutually exclusive terms.
Here’s a different example from a different game; a respawning enemy that gives a certain amount of XP and can be killed over and over again with little effort for infinite XP - that could certainly be considered an exploit, right?
Changing the infinite spawning to something else or adjusting the mechanic so that the enemy stops giving XP automatically after the 4th respawn are fixes to the exploit.
Simply making the enemy always give 0 XP is a simple balance change, but also a fix to the exploit.
A combination of intended mechanics doesn’t make the result intended, imo. Most exploits in one way or another are a combination of intended mechanics, but the way they are combined is the unintended part.
I also in no way ever felt like the devs were putting the blame on players.
I realize this was stated immediately but feel a strong need to confirm that “negative balance change” is in fact the definition of the term “nerf”.
To avoid just seeming snarky here, a rebalancing is not necessarily a negative balance change, though obviously that can be perceive as “negative” or not.
Just taking something out is a nerf. It may be a necessary one, a required nerf. It is still the definition of the term and unlike some terms which have less negatively perceived alternatives, there’s not another brief, technically accurate term for “removing or rebalancing an activity for the sole purpose of removing some perceived benefit”.
Perhaps the XP food only counting for the first 30 minutes of queued up items regardless of whether the player is logged on or not would be a better approach. Who knows how long that would take to go through so this seems like a good bandaid. If you look at wood, is a block, you break it down to timber but you don’t get XP for it. Why has nobody ever mentioned that? It’s literally always been like that and is instant craft. It just seems like a good balance. I think pies need to be looked at no buff should last longer than intended. I am happy for the balance but sad that this easy XP farm was removed.
Anything changes for a negative modifier in any game has been considered a nerf since the beginning. That’s why gaming companies historically try to under promise and over deliver but those times are in the past it seems.
Giving things a buff is always easier than a nerf. You’re seldom going to have your community complaining you buffed an item/process/skill/whatever but any negative balance change (which is historically known as a nerf to anyone playing video games for the last 20 years) is going to always generate an outcry from the community even if it’s a small subset. If it’s a large portion of the community impacted, you can bet there will be even more problems.
It is extremely cringey for me to see just how misused this word is used on the forums here. People seem to keep trying to use this word for its more classical definition when everybody knows that what it really means in the more modern day when referring to any kind of computer system is much much worse.
Using an exploit is something that typically risks getting your account banned or otherwise punished, So unless the devs are fixing on banning or punishing a very large part of the playerbase. I wish they would stop referring to it as an exploit. When game devs define something as an exploit and make it known that it is an exploit, then typically everybody who uses this from then on out should/will be banned/punished. If this is really an exploit then everybody who is rushing to get the last minute exp in before it is patched should be punished.
An exploit typically uses some kind of trickery to expose and abuse a bug. Balance problems are not bugs. Balance problems are not exploits.
The devs purposefully designed rock to stone exp to have a value of 2. The devs purposefuly designed timers not to tick down while logged off. None of theses are bugs or unexpected results from the coding having a breakdown from abnormal or extreme inputs. It is an oversight of how strong a purposeful design choice was, and it is an oversight of how strong the synergy between two or more purposefully designed aspects of the game are with eachother.
This is not an exploit. It is a Balance problem. Or something that is overpowered
>> The Post where the dev defines and names the situation as an Exploit (Click to open) <<
The term exploit should be reserved for the cases where something is really messed up and doing the exploit will most likely get your account punished.
I only used the term nerf because it seems all the cool kids are terming it that… lol. But I personally think it’s more to express something people feel they are loosing something.
You devs certainly have a no win situation with any change you make. What ever direction you decide, It’s still a great game, and it’s very appreciated that you connect with the players. I was very happy to debate in this topic, most (not all) conversations were constructive and positive. Unfortunately this is not the norm these days.
I actually found rock turning to be reasonable as far as xp goes. Sure you get lots of xp for doing it, but it also took the work to get them all, which took a lot of work to make good AOE hammers. I think cutting the xp in half would have been the better choice.
Because people are either too focused on what they want to conceed that some negative changes can actually be positive changes in the grand scheme of things, or are too dumb inflexible to think of a word to differentiate between that and negative changes which don’t have a significant up-side.
You may be able to tell, I’m not a fan of the word.
Stone is a consequence of the gameplay, then processing it is part of the gameplay, so technically speaking we could as easily find another way to gain massive xp and stone was just the direct result of AOE mining, bomb mining destroyed the rock, no large xp gains just resources, they said that wasnt meant to be so got rid of it.
We all found another way, this not meant to be stuff is confusing. What is meant to be then? Nerf everything to 0 cause with enough gear and resources, XP gain can be just as high as stone.
Small example, tier one planet, mega fast brew an aoe hammer that one hits all blocks, xp pie and take down a mountain.
Should we then nerf mining to zero? Making bars? Cooking simple foods? When does it stop.
Just going to drop this here…
I don’t think it is necessary to change stone xp.
There are other things that need to be worked on, such as:
++Focusing on Farming, Fishing, Dungeons, New/Better Weapons, Melee Weapons, Clothes/Armor,
++Hoverboard/Horse/Transport, More Enemies, Private Worlds, more content.
Instead of nerfing stone xp.
I am striking tonight, taking the 20 AOE hammers i have, buy 20 more, some pies and i have thousands of food lol im going to alder, i am so sorry Alder.
Why are you acting like the developers don’t have concurrent working schedules? Not saying anything in favor or against the xp change, but I see posts similar to yours too often. If tuning changes need to be made, they should be.
As far as I am aware, The word Nerf doesn’t care if the out come is good or bad. A nerf is the simple act of taking something and suppressing how effective it is. It doesn’t mean the change is bad, or good for that matter. It means that action is no longer as effective as it used to be.
The same way the word buff means to take something and make it more effective, which also doesn’t imply rather or not it is good for the game as a whole or not.
Nerfs and Buffs can be good, or bad, or neither.
Or at least this is the way I am used to seeing patch note reviewers use both terms.
I agree with her 100%. I have never used stone processing to get XP (I hate refining stone). I get most of mine from mining. I personally don’t think they should change the XP, but if they do, I’m sure people will use something else in the game to get XP. Whatever earns you plots, people will always hammer away at it, to get more plots as fast as possible. Therefore…everything can be exploited.
I would much prefer to see farming/dungeons/etc be added to the game, then to see anything tweaked at the moment.
Also, I would like to add that I think stone processing should have some XP value because (as I stated above), I hate doing it. I buy it from people who choose to do it. Therefore, to me it has value.
That’s exactly my problem with it. It doesn’t TELL the developer anything. The very fact that it doesn’t differentiate between good or bad means that it’s just needlessly stating the obvious; value x is less than value y.
It’s not helping inform the reader about what you think, so there is almost always a better word or phrase to use. If people used them in place of just saying everything that has been decremented is a nerf, we’d have more constructive conversations.
